When I first started to face the emotional pain that was within me, in 2013, I didn’t feel comfortable expressing my emotions. So, when I was working with a therapist, it was a challenge for me to express what was going on for me.

What didn’t help was that I had chosen to work with a female therapist; it wasn’t that I had anything against women. The trouble was that the person who has caused me to the most harm when I was growing up was my mother.

Two Sides
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Consciously, I could see that this person was nothing like my mother and that it was safe for me to open up. However, at a deeper level, another part of me was unable to completely relax and to leg go.

Therefore, although I was able to let go of a certain amount of emotional pain, I was only getting so far. I wasn’t able to cry in front of her and I’m not sure that this would ever have happened.

I Was Different

I ended up going away the following year to Mexico for my sister’s wedding, and when I was away I started to feel like my old self. My mood had changed and whilst I was there I enjoyed meeting different people.

Going away had lifted me up and this made me realise that I needed to work with someone else. I ended up finding a male therapist to work with, and this was someone who reminded me of my father in many ways.

The Next Step

He was kind, gentle, empathic, and compassionate, and he could relate to what I was going through. Also, around this time I ended up having a tantric massage, and this was when I ended up crying.

Even though I was next to a woman when this happened, the wounded child within me felt safe. This woman’s presence and nature allowed me to relax and to completely let go.

A Big Fear

Up until this point, I didn’t believe that I would be able to handle the pain if I cried; I thought it would be too much for me to handle. Once I had cried, I felt a lot better and I proved to myself that I could handle it.

And after I had been working with the therapist for a while, he suggested that it would be a good idea for me to see if I could cry when I was by myself. I knew it was time to me to face this pain, so I gave it a go.

A Big Risk

One of the main reasons why I found it so hard to express my emotions was because of how I was treated when I was younger. If I expressed how I felt, I would often end up being harmed, verbally abused and/or abandoned.

Deep down, I believed that if I expressed how I felt something like this would happen again. As a result of this, I believed that I had to hide how I felt in order to survive and to make sure that the people around me didn’t leave.

A New Habit

It had taken me a while to get to the point where I was ready to cry out the pain that was within me, but once I started I didn’t look back. I ended up crying more or less everyday for about a year, and I used pictures, music and other triggers to bring this pain up to the surface.

After I had stopped working with this therapist, I looked for someone who did rebirthing Breathwork. I had heard about this type of therapy after I had read a book on family constellations.

A Highly trained Therapist

It wasn’t long before I found someone within driving distance, and this was a therapist called Debra Van Minnen. I soon came to see that this was someone who knew exactly what they were talking about

Prior to this, I had only worked with people who had trained in one or a few therapies; yet here was someone who had trained in all kinds of things. And not only that, she was also highly intuitive and empathic.

It All Came Out

I thought that if I had had a mother like her, I probably would have been a very different person. But even though I had gone there to do rebirthing, I ended up doing a number of other things first.

One of the things we did was something called gestalt therapy, and this was when I started to get in touch with my inner child again. Along with this, this was also a time when I was able to cry.

A New Inner Model

There was the work that I had done before that had played a part and then there was the fact that I felt safe enough to open up in her presence. I felt incredibly grateful that I had come into contact with her.

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